Women of the Fur Trade opens Touchstone Theatre's just-announced 50th season

More mainstage offerings include love story Gertrude & Alice, video-game-style production 2021, and solo show Danceboy

By emily lyth

Women of the Fur Trade. Photo by Fred Cattroll

TOUCHSTONE THEATRE IS celebrating its milestone 50th anniversary this season, with the return of Frances Koncan’s Women of the Fur Trade kicking it off.

The Anishinaabe and Slovene playwright’s satirical work—presented in partnership with Western Canada Theatre and UBC Theatre and Film—follows three women in the era of the Canadian fur trade as they discuss love and politics. When Stir reviewed the show at the Firehall Arts Centre last year, we called it “a clever, anarchic take on Canadian history”, noting that “there’s camaraderie, there are uncomfortable exchanges, and there’s juicy gossip” as it progresses.

Women of the Fur Trade is a coproduction by National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre, Great Canadian Theatre Company, and Native Earth Performing Arts. It will run from September 25 to October 4 at UBC’s Frederic Wood Theatre, with Renae Morriseau directing.

Three more mainstage performances are in store during Touchstone’s 2025-26 season. Gertrude & Alice—a love story by Toronto playwrights Evalyn Parry and Anna Chatterton with Karin Randoja—will be at the PAL Studio Theatre from November 6 to 23, presented in partnership with Western Gold Theatre and in association with United Players of Vancouver. Touchstone artistic director Lois Anderson will direct the work, which is about the iconic partnership of American writer Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

On January 23 and 24, 2026, Cole Lewis, Patrick Blenkarn, and Sam Ferguson’s 2021 will be at the Annex. Presented with the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, the coproduction from The Elbow Theatre and Guilty by Association combines memory and simulation. In the live-narrated video-game performance, an audience member will assume the role of Lewis’s father—an unhoused veteran in New Jersey—as he relives his final weeks of hospitalization.

Cole Lewis in 2021. Photo by Dahlia Katz

Munish Sharma’s Danceboy will cap the mainstage productions in March 2026; the venue and specific dates will be announced closer to the show. The Pi Provocateurs presentation, produced by Theatre Conspiracy and directed by Gavan Cheema, is Sharma’s high-energy solo exploration of the Desi diasporic rhythms that shaped his lifelong love of dance. He addresses themes like toxic masculinity and cultural stereotypes throughout the comedic show.

Touchstone will also present four special events throughout the season. Among them is The Time Is Now: An Evening of Climate Change Plays on September 17, copresented with the Climate Change Theatre Action’s worldwide short play festival. Then there’s Theatre Under the Wire in February 2026; the event coproduced with Axis Theatre, Monster Theatre, and the Vancouver Fringe Festival challenges artists to write, rehearse, and perform short plays in just 48 hours.

More information will be announced soon about two other new-year offerings. Fresh Ink: New Play Festival includes staged readings of El Terremoto by Christine Quintana, Wiwimaw by Tai Amy Grauman, and Ali and Ali by Marcus Youssef, Camyar Chai, and Guillermo Verdecchia. Plus, a fundraising event called The Lawyer Show will return to the BMO Theatre Centre.

Touchstone’s upcoming season will also include its annual Early Career Playwrights Cohort; and the 2024–26 cycle of the Flying Start program, helmed by Daniela Atiencia, continues with Jordyn Wood’s play Vascular Necrosis.

Individual tickets and subscription packages are now on sale. Interested artists can keep an eye on Touchstone’s website for Theatre Under the Wire and Early Career Playwrights Cohort application calls. 

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